A short problem
This math problem had me going for a bit. Looked at from a distance, it looked like one thing; and when I had the occasion to sit down and hash it out, it was quite another. A student submitted a Continue Reading
What is “universal” about USB?
I am one of those hopeless romantics who believe that words must mean something. “Universal” is quite a stong word when used, and its all-encompassing reach implies that it is good for … well, everything. As in the whole universe Continue Reading
Technology in Mathematics: Chalk
First off, May the Fourth be with you! (Had to get that in there…) Chalk still stands out as the technology of choice of mathematicians everywhere. Those of us forced to use whiteboards realize the wisdom of the ancients once Continue Reading
The infinite sum which equals -1/12
On 16 January, 1913, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk living in Madras, India, sent a letter to Oxford professor Godfrey Harold Hardy, which contained many of his intuitive mathematical musings, one of which led to the conclusion: In normal mathematics, this Continue Reading
Update on Tex editors
Nearly three years ago, I wrote about a comparison of LaTeX editors. Soon after, I began to use a third editor which, if you are a latex expert, you almost certaintly would have heard about, and are probably in fact Continue Reading
A brief note on Pythagorean Triples
And I decided today to share what I learned about an algorithm for generating Pythagorean triples for any and , where Z. A Pythagorean triple are any three whole numbers which satisfy the equation . Let ; , and you Continue Reading
What the Golden Ratio has to do with The Thomas Crown Affair
There is a Geogebra app written by Ben Sparks which can run on your browser. There are many facets to this app, such as an animation of “circles within circles”. When this app runs (see the screenshot on your left), Continue Reading
Whatever happened to the conic sections: Parabolas
I don’t know about anywhere else, but in our school district, any parabola that is not solvable by the quadratic formula is an endangered species. Specifically, I am mourning the loss of parabolas whose directrix is not parallel to the x-axis. The Continue Reading
Happy π Day 2018!
Today, we mourn the passing of Stephen Hawking (age 76). He joins Howard Aiken, a computer designer from the early days, who died on day back in 1973. For the record, Albert Einstein was born this day back in 1879. Continue Reading
The meaning of i^i
Imaginary numbers, like most things at the peripherals of our grasp of reality, interest me, since they appear to have their own rules at times. There was a video blog some time ago that tried to reckon with and considered Continue Reading